How Can you Clear Sensitive Data From a Flash Drive?

2048Megabytes

2048Megabytes

Active Member
How can you clear sensitive data from a USB flash drive?

If you were to erase the sensitive data from the flash drive, fill the flash drive up to 99% capacity with various non sensitive data and then format the drive is there anyway the sensitive data could be recovered?
 
linkin

linkin

VIP Member
I think your best bet is to delete everything of the flashdrive, then format it to a different filesystem and then back to FAT32 or whatever it uses.
 
2048Megabytes

2048Megabytes

Active Member
tlarkin said:
If it is sensitive data why not encrypt it?
Click to expand...

I don't want to have to go thru the pain of having to put a password on the flash drive. I would much rather just erase the old sensitive data on it.

Well, I filled the flash drive to 99% capacity with useless information then I formatted the drive in NTFS format and then put it back to its original format. The old data was very likely all overwritten so likely it cannot possibly be recovered now. I don't have much understanding of flash memory and how it works though. Hopefully the overwriting principle is the same as a flash drive.
 
CrayonMuncher

CrayonMuncher

Active Member
from what ive read for data to be fully deleted the drive sectors in use by the senesitive data they need to be overwritten 7 times, dont ask me why 7 really dont know, this effectively destroys the data and makes it unrecoverable, although probably still possible by forensic scientest to some extent
i used a program called zdelete its free for 30 days

have a look here

http://www.zdelete.com/eraser.htm
 
S.T.A.R.S.

S.T.A.R.S.

banned
You can delete the data from the USB stick forever using the simple DOS tool called KILL DISK 4.1.Once you delete your data with it,there is no way you can get it back.;)
Here is the picture:
active-killdisk-dos.png



Cheers!
 
tlarkin

tlarkin

VIP Member
If it is really that sensitive, encrypt it. What will happen if you lose the thumb drive? You won't be able to securely wipe it. Encrypt it and then wipe it, then the old table of contents is now encrypted.
 
2048Megabytes

2048Megabytes

Active Member
tlarkin said:
If it is really that sensitive, encrypt it. What will happen if you lose the thumb drive? You won't be able to securely wipe it. Encrypt it and then wipe it, then the old table of contents is now encrypted.
Click to expand...

How would you recommend encrypting the flash drive? I have Windows Vista Basic so I can't encrypt using the Windows Operating System.
 
2048Megabytes

2048Megabytes

Active Member
Thanks for the advice Tremmor. "Active KillDisk" is a good program that fills a flash drive with zeros. You have to buy the program to get it to do other features. I used it and filled my flash drive with zeros. I am certain no one could recover any of the old data that I erased off of it.
 
Twist86

Twist86

Active Member
No matter what you do they can get the information. Not to long back the News sat there and recovered all the information off a old HDD that had been "zeroed out" etc and other popular methods of removing data.
If you really want to be secure and make sure they can't read the data break it then burn the pieces is the only sure fire way to be safe. 90% of the normal people wont know how to access the data though once you delete it ^-^
 
2048Megabytes

2048Megabytes

Active Member
The flash drive had about 400 names, phone numbers, addresses, and birth dates of people in my church congregation.
 
Last edited:
2048Megabytes

2048Megabytes

Active Member
Twist86 said:
No matter what you do they can get the information. Not to long back the News sat there and recovered all the information off a old HDD that had been "zeroed out" etc and other popular methods of removing data.
If you really want to be secure and make sure they can't read the data break it then burn the pieces is the only sure fire way to be safe. 90% of the normal people wont know how to access the data though once you delete it ^-^
Click to expand...

I highly doubt anyone could recover data from a hard drive data erased using the methods the program Darik's Boot and Nuke uses. It uses various writing patterns to write over all hard drive data and then zeros out the hard drive.

But concerning a flash drive I need to study the technology to know how to cleanse data from a Solid State Disk or a flash drive.
 
tremmor

tremmor

Well-Known Member
i think the comment from innercx is more esthetically correct. I read many articles on this subject. they were all basically the same. the free killdisk was one type of wipe. the paid ver does it many different ways. the same thing. for me the single wipe works fine.

something else and why i used it. ive wiped the hd and installing a new installation. same operating system and had the same problems after the installation. it was low level format. thats the way i did it. On the otherhand the manufactures like seagate offered software that would detect and good for all drives. one of the options was for low level format.

come along ways in the past. maybe i was doing a quick format with the windows installation cd. it was my learning curve.
 
tlarkin

tlarkin

VIP Member
Twist86 said:
No matter what you do they can get the information. Not to long back the News sat there and recovered all the information off a old HDD that had been "zeroed out" etc and other popular methods of removing data.
If you really want to be secure and make sure they can't read the data break it then burn the pieces is the only sure fire way to be safe. 90% of the normal people wont know how to access the data though once you delete it ^-^
Click to expand...

AES encryption is still uncrack-able as the NSA has a 4 billion dollar ransom paying out whomever can crack it. Skype uses AES encryption and they want to crack it to eavesdrop on so called terrorist cells that use skype for communications.

Encrypt the data, put a strong password on it and it will most likely be safe.
 
tlarkin

tlarkin

VIP Member
2048Megabytes said:
I highly doubt anyone could recover data from a hard drive data erased using the methods the program Darik's Boot and Nuke uses. It uses various writing patterns to write over all hard drive data and then zeros out the hard drive.

But concerning a flash drive I need to study the technology to know how to cleanse data from a Solid State Disk or a flash drive.
Click to expand...

There are methods of getting data, even from destroyed disks. The machinery they use to do it is very expensive and not everyone has access to them. Just look at Drive Saver's website and look at all their testimonial stories. They have recovered some data from some crazy situations.
 
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